Your son asks how your day went when you get home from work, but the dogs are pawing you and demanding to be fed, so you say, "Later, Billy! Can't you see the dogs are going crazy?" — and you never get around to it.

You tell your child, "Maybe next time," when she wants to help you cook dinner, because you're busy and don't have time to clean up the mess that you know it will generate.

You are tense about meeting a deadline at work, so you yell at your son for something you would usually forgive him for.

You cancel the road trip you promised your daughter, because you have to clean out the basement.

Parents of ADHD kids love, support, advocate, and pray for their children. No one does it better. But when life hits the spin cycle and chores, work, filing taxes, and making momentous decisions like whether cable or The Dish is the way to go, parents may lose their bearings — and lose sight of their child's needs.

A gem of a book titled Always Kiss Me Good Night: Instructions on Raising the Perfect Parent (Three Rivers Press) will guide you home. J.S. Salt, a writer who lives with his wife and son in Los Angeles, had the brilliant idea of asking 1,000 kids, "If I could tell my parents how to raise me, I'd tell them..." Some of their answers are below, complete with age-appropriate misspellings.